There is so much religion involved on this topic that this discussion is likely to evolve into a big flame war. Some people really like Microsoft products, while other people hate them.
You may call me religious, as I have never really liked products from Microsoft, and my knowledge of Visual Studio is limited.
I use Eclipse on a daily basis and I'm quite happy with the IDE unlike other IDEs I've got to know, like NetBeans.
Having said that, the article from IBM looks fine to me. If we ever get a new employee who knows Visual Studio but not Eclipse, I would point him to it hoping that he would spend a few minutes on it (but no more) and that it would help him getting started a bit faster in the Eclipse world.
The headline "Vista Bug Costs Users In Swedish Town Their Internet" is clearly misleading; nobody here seems to disagree that this only affects Vista users.
And if this was important for the people affected (Lund is the largest university city in Sweden), this would be all over the blog-world in Sweden. But I have been unable to find any swedish bloggers writing about this. In fact all the blogs I have seen seem to end up at the same Inquirer article that we see in TFA, and the Inquirer goes into little detail and has no references. And if you understand swedish and look at the web pages of the city net of Lund, there is no mentioning of such problems, not even on their support pages.
Sweden is quite different from the US when it comes to internet access. In Sweden there is real competition, and if somebody do not like what the city net of Lund is offering, there is at least two (probably 3-5, but I only know two because I do not live there) other ISPs that people can choose from in Lund.
And the funny thing is that the city net of Lund isn't actually an ISP. They supply most of (but not all) the lines in the city for people who want 100mbps internet access, and they have a number of ISPs that supply internet access through these connections. Once you have your connection, you are directed to an internal web page where you are asked to select the ISP you want to use.
Most likely the problem with Vista is only for getting an initial IP address so you can go to this web page to select the ISP you want to use. And this is why nobody in Sweden really cares about this.
TFA says:
"Wednesday's decision sets a very bad precedent and demonstrates the need to strengthen Russian intellectual property rights laws," said Konstantin Zemchenkov, director of Russian Anti-piracy Organization. "I can say unequivocally that the activities of sites like AllofMP3.com are illegal in Russia, because our country has signed on to many international conventions that prohibit them."
I think this quote sums up the problem getting a judgment against allofmp3. The argument seems to be something like "although we cannot show it is illegal according to russian law, we think it is wrong, and it has to be stopped."
But allofmp3 is legal because of the compulsory license system in the russian copyright law. And such a compulsory copyright license system is legal according to all relevant international treaties, including all the WIPO and WTO treaties.
In the US, a similar compulsory copyright license system is currently being abused by RIAA and SoundExchange to kill internet radio.
Saying that breaking a law (like the "blacks in back" from the 60s) is always bad or disgraceful is just plain stupid. We should not follow laws just because they are there, they need to reflect our beliefs and protect our freedom.
Any good law has to follow community standards. If too many people think we have to follow a law just because it has been passed, or if the law criminalizes a lot of people, we risk ending up with the nazi regime that came because too many germans thought "ordnung muss sein" and were worried about "terrorists" in the thirties.
Of course this argument can also be abused by people intending to break a law they do not personally think is good. This is not what I mean to say here, but we should all be careful about following a law just because it has been passed as a law. If a law making it mandatory to shoot everybody with glasses at sight was passed (as was essentially the case in Cambodia some years ago), I hope that everybody would violate it.
And today I worry because I see people being a bit too law-abiding, even if the laws seem unjust or can target almost everybody. And it makes me worry if we will soon see another instance (in swedish) of nazi-germany somewhere in the world.
Technically TPB doesn't host movies, which is why they are still around.
Correct. This is hosted by people like me, who want to spread the good message in this documentary.
I have been seeding this torrent since a few days after it appeared on TPB, and it is quite interesting to see the/. effect on a torrent. This torrent was quite popular just after it appeared on TPB, but - as seen for most torrents - the interest faded after a few weeks.
But now, because of the/. effect, the torrent is more popular than ever. I don't remember ever having seen the maximum number of peers I allow for one torrent downloading from me (for this torrent), but I see that right now. And they all try hard to download as much as possible from me (which is not much since I have limited upstream bandwidth, and a lot of other good torrents to seed). But the more who try to download, the better performance bittorrent gives you, so the/. effect actually means faster downloads for a torrent.
Please feel free to get this. It is really interesting to see this documentary, and it has been a good eye-opener to many people who otherwise thought that harsher copyright protection is always better for our culture. And remember: This is put on TPB with the blessing of those who produced the documentary.
If everybody just 'ignored' the patent there wouldn't be any HIV drug worth giving to the people.
Oh really? So you think that the need for medicine will go away without patents, or what?
As long as there is a need, there are people willing to pay. In particular when those who have the need know they are otherwise going to die.
There are actually strong arguments for stating that there would be more and better innovation in medicine without patents on medicine. But this is off topic in a discussion about software patents.
The treaty is not an EU treaty. It is a multilateral treaty signed by all EU member states, and some european states outside the EU.
All signatories to the treaty have harmonized their patent laws to the treaty. While the treaty itself only have legal effect on the signing states, the local patent laws can be enforced in court.
Article 52.2 in the treaty clearly states that software as such cannot be patented.
To extend their business the European Patent Office (EPO) has reinterpreted this several times, and their current interpretation can be simplified as: "It the software works it is not software as such, and can thus be patented."
Last year their turnover from patent fees was over 982 million Euro. But that is only the fees to be paid to EPO. Fees has to be paid to the local patent offices of all of the states where the patent is to be effective. In total, just the cost of maintaining the patent system in Europe is probably over 20 billion Euro.
If you look at article 3, you will see what I mean. It is limited to official activities. For some strange reason there is an exception for civil damages after traffic accidents.
Eva Lichtenberger is one of the EU parliament members with the best insight into this issue.
On June 10th, I saw her speaking at a public conference in Vienna, held as part of the first international conference of the pirate parties.
One of the things she said was about the importance of contacting parlamentarians to let them know what you think. Even if you get no reply (rarely happens) or a standard form letter in return, the politician you contact learns that somebody is caring about the issue and that the issue may move votes.
If you need real information on the state of software patents in Europe, without the lies and half-thruths we see from the patent establishment and some politicians, FFII is the place to go. These are the people who have done most of the hard work to avoid software patents in Europe.
We still have problems with software patents in Europe. The main problem is that the European Patent Office (EPO) is still issuing of thousands of software patents, although the European Patent Convention (EPC) clearly and explicitly states that software as such is not patentable. But EPO has reinterpreted EPC several times over the years, and now their interpretation basically is: "If the software works it is no longer software as such, and can thus be patented."
So now we have tens of thousands of software patents that have been issued by EPO. These software patents are illegal according the the law, and if a patent holder tries to assert such a patent in a court of law, it will be ruled invalid. This creates political pressure from the patent holders to get their patents legalized. And of course the EPO wants to have the text of the EPC changed so it fits their perverted "interpretation".
EPO has twice called for a diplomatic conference where they asked for this change in EPC. Both times their request was denied. A diplomatic conference is the only proper way to change EPC, as this treaty is not an EU treaty.
When that failed, they tried lobbying the EU to create law that would force all EU member states to change their patent laws to legalize software patents. This was the infamous CII directive, and was voted down by the EU parliament in the second reading.
When trying to force the EU member states to change their patent laws failed, they tried another backdoor. This was the EPLA. Basically this was meant to be a new specialized european patent court, with judges appointed by the EPO. This new court was meant to be above all other courts, including the European Court of Justice and the supreme courts of all the member countries. The idea was that the EPO could then make their "interpretation" of EPC case law. Fortunately this is off the table (for now).
But the pressure to legalize software patents is still there, and the EPO is still issuing illegal software patents. Even the EU Commission (who have been on the side of EPO since a few years before the CII directive was proposed) has had to acknowledge that EPO is outside any political or administrative control. And the EPO has nothing to fear, as they are above the law. (Really: If an EPO employee commits a murder, he cannot be prosecuted unless the EPO accepts it.)
In a related story, reader paulraps writes "Sweden's Justice Department is backing a new proposal that would enable copyright holders to find out the identities of people illegally sharing their material on the Internet." I find this pretty sick... Isn't the point of having law enforcement do this because they are supposed to uphold certain legal standards?
The "problem" for the anti pirates in Sweden is that a number of court cases have established that file sharing is too small a law violation for even the police to obtain the subscriber identity behind an IP number.
And of course the swedish anti pirates would love to start running an extorsion-like business like the RIAA is doing. So now they are lobbying for a law giving them the right to get this information directly without having the police involved.
You keep repeating these links. But in this context it actually indicates who this uploader could be.
The GP post tells about a danish anti piracy guy telling that child pornography is good to use as a tool for fighting piracy.
I can tell you that this was said by the danish attorney Johan Schlüter (head of the danish anti piracy group) in a hearing held at the American Chamber of Commerce in Stockholm on May 29th. He told about the great success they had had in Denmark getting allofmp3.com blocked with the danish child pornography filter. He also advocated child pornography as the way to fight piracy, as the politicians understand child pornography better than copyright.
If you look at your Google cache link, you will find that the user achim106 started uploading in June 4th - the first monday after this hearing. You can also see that he has never uploaded anything during the weekends, only on working days.
Is this some anti piracy guy spreading child pornography as part of his work? We may never find out, as the swedish police seem very reluctant to investigate this. Anyway, none of what he uploaded was actually child pornography. It was a combination of "barely legal" porn and non-pornographic pictures of children - just what you would expect from an anti piracy guy who wants to upload child pornography without being in possession of any.
I cannot understand how this can be moderated informative. It is nothing but a claim by an AC, without any references or arguments supporting it.
And the claim is wrong: After the mainstream press in Sweden has picked up this story, the swedish police has issued a press release (in swedish), where they confirm that they intend to start blocking TPB next week if there is still child pornography to be found at the site. At least it is now official. (The police never contacted TPB, and the reason we knew about it before it happened was because a confidential mail from the police to some ISPs was leaked.)
But the police it still not telling where the child pornography can be found (if they did it would be removed immediately by TPB). Could somebody please download all the 600000+ torrents from TPB and look through the downloads before next week so we can get the child pornography removed?
If this blocking works as it originally did in Denmark (which I think was the first country to take such a list into use), the "until proven guilty" part is NOT true.
The swedish blocking is working exactly the same way as in Denmark. Basically it is a secret list of sites to be blocked. Those placed on the list are usually not notified about the fact. And nobody is held responsible of wrongful additions to the list. No court is ever asked about additions to the list.
In Denmark, sites would be added to the list as an administrative act without any requirement of a court ruling, and there was no formal way for a site to protest.
And even worse: It looks to me like the police is in some cases adding entries for cases where they have jurisdiction, but without starting criminal investigations.
(I believe it has now been changed so it is possible for a site to protest, but a court ruling is still not necessary.)
I know of no such change. If you do, I am very interested.
The only public case of a wrongful addition to the blocking list in Denmark was a guy who had a site with links to porn. He was not notified before he was put on the list, but discovered it when he tried to look at his own site and instead found a sign saying that the site was blocked because it contained child pornography. The police claimed they had evidence when he contacted them. His domain was listed in whois with his full name, address and phone number. When the press found out the police backtracked and removed the block of the site. The police never investigated the evidence they claimed to have, and nothing more happened.
This is not "innocent until proven guilty". This is the police publicly claiming "guilty!" when they suspect that child pornography can be found on a site, or on other sites that the site links to.
The UK government cannot arbitrarily alter copyright term.
No, but they can make the term longer. All international treaties on copyright that the UK is bound by (including EU directives) give minimum terms, and the UK government is free to make the terms longer.
There is a lot of pressure on the EU to make a directive to lengthen the term.
If the copyright lobby can persuade one of the EU member countries to make the term longer, they can use "law harmonization" as another excuse for a EU directive that forces all the other EU countries to also make the term longer.
Freedom of expression, the press, and the public domain is not a trivial thing. None of the above are in anyway endangered by **AA, nor defended by AllOfMP3 et al.
In quite a lot of countries the freedom of the press is endangered due to the US copyright lobby. They want to listen to all our communications, including the so far confidential communications between press and the press informer, and they are pushing legislation for this purpose that was originally meant to be against terrorists. The EU data retension directive is a fine example of this.
And no, allofmp3 is not defending this. But they are trying hard to deliver the service their customers have already paid for, as you can see from TFA. This is more than we can say about the RIAA members.
And we all have to remember that allofmp3 has always been paying the about 15% they have to pay to the russian collection societies, and that the current problem really is because IFPI thinks this amount is too small, although it is significantly larger than what most artists get.
Such a viewpoint looks extreme, when you just state it like you do. But I think you are right that the patent system needs to be abolished.
Originally I was just against software patents. But as I started studying patents in other areas, I realized that there are major problems in all patentable areas. It took me about 7 years to get from "software patents should be abolished" to "all patents should be abolished".
There are great differences in why patents should be abolished, according to the area of patent, and this makes this issue harder to explain to most people. I won't go into the reasons here.
But one thing I think everybody here can see (at least if the know about the history of patent law) is that the patent system seems to have it's own life, and seems to expand without changes in law. Should we really allow a system that can make "new law" without the support of our democratically elected representatives?
This is actually the start of a new landgrab (or should I say seagrab) made possible because of a change in international law. I think most nations around the north pole are investigating the geology these years to see if they can make claims. Russia is just the first nation to actually try to claim territory according to the new rules. Such claims have to be made no later than 10 years after ratifying the treaty, and Russia ratified in 1997, so they have to make the claim this year, or they will have lost the right to claim the territory.
My own country is also investigating the territory north of Greenland to see if we can claim territory. We may also claim the north pole (pdf in danish, with a map on page three showing the territories we may want to claim). We are planning to make claims before 2014 (we ratified in 2004), but the russian claims may accelerate our claims.
It is a highly subjective opinion if a democracy is the "best democracy", so if I had claimed that we would be discussing what makes a democracy good from now and until the end of time.
Instead I claim that Germany has a working democracy. A working democracy is IMHO a democracy where the voters are interested in what their elected representatives actually do; a democracy where the voters are prepared to change their vote if their elected representatives don't do what the voters think is in the best interest of them and their society; and a democracy where new parties actually have a chance to get to participate in elections and gain power if voters think they can do better than the existing parties.
In such a democracy the government has to fear the voters. The government knows that if they do not work in the best interest of the people they represent they will be outed at the next election.
A democracy like this is what I like to call a working democracy. There are lots of countries around the world that claim to have democracies because elections are held from time to time. But some of these "democracies" are not actually working, in most cases because the existing political parties have found a way to keep new political parties from getting elected.
The germans actually have found a way of organizing their society so that the people do not have to fear their government, but where the government has to fear the people.
This is called democracy.
Not democracy like they claimed to have in USSR, where you could either vote for the one party, or abstain from voting.
Not democracy like they claim to have in the US of A, where you have the choice between two parties that have almost the same politics, or you can abstain from voting or throw your vote away on some party that has no chance of getting elected.
No, a real democracy where there are multible parties, where new parties actually have a chance of getting into parliament and/or government. A democracy where the people know they can change things with their vote, and where the people are prepared to vote to throw out a government that is not working in their best interest.
I agree that what we need is a healthy market. And if a free market is allowed to run completely unregulated it will develop monopolies that are unhealthy.
Avoiding monopolies and awarding patents is therefore a legitimate function of government.
I think you are contradicting yourself here. Patents are (by any economic definition) monopolies in the market. So while I agree on the "avoiding monopolies" part of your statement, the "awarding patents" part is IMHO actually creating monopolies.
You have a good point when you say that 20 years likely is too long considering the pace and nature of a lot of the current innovations.
Given the speed of technological advance today, a more reasonable term of the patent monopoly would be 1-2 years.
But lowering the patent protection term to 1-2 years would make the patent system as we know it today a joke, as most patents take 2-3 years to issue from the time of the innovation.
Yes, I don't think my GF post is a troll. Probably some moderator disagreed on my views, but metamoderation should catch him.
Here's the catch to what you said though. IF I don't have some mechanism (like a patent) to protect my ideas so I can develop them they WILL be developed by individuals who can (and faster since most likely it would be done by a large corporation).
But individuals and small start-ups generally have a lot shorter time to market than large corporations...
IMHO this is another argument against patents. With patents there is no incentive to get to the market first. In fact just sitting on a patent until somebody else (who may not even know about your patent) enters the market and then demanding royalties could give you more income with less investment in product development. But then, you note this is a flaw in the patent system. On the other hand, if there were no patents, everybody would have to work fast to get on the market. Entering the market asap and constantly innovating would be the best way for a company to survive in a world without patents.
Anyways, saying abolish the system I think is a bit extreme.
Your are right that this is extreme. Probably it is the most extreme viewpoint on patents (perhaps except the viewpoint that anything however trivial should be patentable).
At first I was only concerned with patents on software. But then I started studying patents in other areas, how they affected the market, and how they affected the world we live in. Even after I was convinced that patents in almost all patentable areas vere bad (which took me about 8 years), I refused to argue for the complete abolishment of the patent system for a few years, as I thought it was too extreme.
So even if I spend the time needed to convince you that patents are bad in all areas (and there are a lot of differences between fx. patents on software, business methods, genes, medicine, chemistry and mechanics), you would probably still be inclined to see the complete abolishment of the patent system as too extreme. Looking back I am surprised at how long it took me to take on this opinion.
We need to give protections for innovators of new techonologies but that protection needs to be reasonable and realistic. I think we need to give innovators the best possible opportunities to get their innovations to the market. And today one of the largest obstackles for new innovative upstart companies to get to the market is patents.
Slashdot Mirror
There is so much religion involved on this topic that this discussion is likely to evolve into a big flame war. Some people really like Microsoft products, while other people hate them.
You may call me religious, as I have never really liked products from Microsoft, and my knowledge of Visual Studio is limited.
I use Eclipse on a daily basis and I'm quite happy with the IDE unlike other IDEs I've got to know, like NetBeans.
Having said that, the article from IBM looks fine to me. If we ever get a new employee who knows Visual Studio but not Eclipse, I would point him to it hoping that he would spend a few minutes on it (but no more) and that it would help him getting started a bit faster in the Eclipse world.
The headline "Vista Bug Costs Users In Swedish Town Their Internet" is clearly misleading; nobody here seems to disagree that this only affects Vista users.
And if this was important for the people affected (Lund is the largest university city in Sweden), this would be all over the blog-world in Sweden. But I have been unable to find any swedish bloggers writing about this. In fact all the blogs I have seen seem to end up at the same Inquirer article that we see in TFA, and the Inquirer goes into little detail and has no references. And if you understand swedish and look at the web pages of the city net of Lund, there is no mentioning of such problems, not even on their support pages.
Sweden is quite different from the US when it comes to internet access. In Sweden there is real competition, and if somebody do not like what the city net of Lund is offering, there is at least two (probably 3-5, but I only know two because I do not live there) other ISPs that people can choose from in Lund.
And the funny thing is that the city net of Lund isn't actually an ISP. They supply most of (but not all) the lines in the city for people who want 100mbps internet access, and they have a number of ISPs that supply internet access through these connections. Once you have your connection, you are directed to an internal web page where you are asked to select the ISP you want to use.
Most likely the problem with Vista is only for getting an initial IP address so you can go to this web page to select the ISP you want to use. And this is why nobody in Sweden really cares about this.
Natalie Portman's pants are not big enough for entire galaxies...
I think this quote sums up the problem getting a judgment against allofmp3. The argument seems to be something like "although we cannot show it is illegal according to russian law, we think it is wrong, and it has to be stopped."
But allofmp3 is legal because of the compulsory license system in the russian copyright law. And such a compulsory copyright license system is legal according to all relevant international treaties, including all the WIPO and WTO treaties.
In the US, a similar compulsory copyright license system is currently being abused by RIAA and SoundExchange to kill internet radio.
Any good law has to follow community standards. If too many people think we have to follow a law just because it has been passed, or if the law criminalizes a lot of people, we risk ending up with the nazi regime that came because too many germans thought "ordnung muss sein" and were worried about "terrorists" in the thirties.
Of course this argument can also be abused by people intending to break a law they do not personally think is good. This is not what I mean to say here, but we should all be careful about following a law just because it has been passed as a law. If a law making it mandatory to shoot everybody with glasses at sight was passed (as was essentially the case in Cambodia some years ago), I hope that everybody would violate it.
And today I worry because I see people being a bit too law-abiding, even if the laws seem unjust or can target almost everybody. And it makes me worry if we will soon see another instance (in swedish) of nazi-germany somewhere in the world.
Correct. This is hosted by people like me, who want to spread the good message in this documentary.
I have been seeding this torrent since a few days after it appeared on TPB, and it is quite interesting to see the /. effect on a torrent. This torrent was quite popular just after it appeared on TPB, but - as seen for most torrents - the interest faded after a few weeks.
But now, because of the /. effect, the torrent is more popular than ever. I don't remember ever having seen the maximum number of peers I allow for one torrent downloading from me (for this torrent), but I see that right now. And they all try hard to download as much as possible from me (which is not much since I have limited upstream bandwidth, and a lot of other good torrents to seed). But the more who try to download, the better performance bittorrent gives you, so the /. effect actually means faster downloads for a torrent.
Please feel free to get this. It is really interesting to see this documentary, and it has been a good eye-opener to many people who otherwise thought that harsher copyright protection is always better for our culture. And remember: This is put on TPB with the blessing of those who produced the documentary.
Oh really? So you think that the need for medicine will go away without patents, or what?
As long as there is a need, there are people willing to pay. In particular when those who have the need know they are otherwise going to die.
There are actually strong arguments for stating that there would be more and better innovation in medicine without patents on medicine. But this is off topic in a discussion about software patents.
The treaty is not an EU treaty. It is a multilateral treaty signed by all EU member states, and some european states outside the EU.
All signatories to the treaty have harmonized their patent laws to the treaty. While the treaty itself only have legal effect on the signing states, the local patent laws can be enforced in court.
Article 52.2 in the treaty clearly states that software as such cannot be patented.
To extend their business the European Patent Office (EPO) has reinterpreted this several times, and their current interpretation can be simplified as: "It the software works it is not software as such, and can thus be patented."
Last year their turnover from patent fees was over 982 million Euro. But that is only the fees to be paid to EPO. Fees has to be paid to the local patent offices of all of the states where the patent is to be effective. In total, just the cost of maintaining the patent system in Europe is probably over 20 billion Euro.
What I said here was of course a bit simplified. The exact rules can be found in the Protocol On Privileges and Immunities of the European Patent Organization.
What you say is in Article 1.
If you look at article 3, you will see what I mean. It is limited to official activities. For some strange reason there is an exception for civil damages after traffic accidents.
Eva Lichtenberger is one of the EU parliament members with the best insight into this issue.
On June 10th, I saw her speaking at a public conference in Vienna, held as part of the first international conference of the pirate parties.
One of the things she said was about the importance of contacting parlamentarians to let them know what you think. Even if you get no reply (rarely happens) or a standard form letter in return, the politician you contact learns that somebody is caring about the issue and that the issue may move votes.
If you need real information on the state of software patents in Europe, without the lies and half-thruths we see from the patent establishment and some politicians, FFII is the place to go. These are the people who have done most of the hard work to avoid software patents in Europe.
We still have problems with software patents in Europe. The main problem is that the European Patent Office (EPO) is still issuing of thousands of software patents, although the European Patent Convention (EPC) clearly and explicitly states that software as such is not patentable. But EPO has reinterpreted EPC several times over the years, and now their interpretation basically is: "If the software works it is no longer software as such, and can thus be patented."
So now we have tens of thousands of software patents that have been issued by EPO. These software patents are illegal according the the law, and if a patent holder tries to assert such a patent in a court of law, it will be ruled invalid. This creates political pressure from the patent holders to get their patents legalized. And of course the EPO wants to have the text of the EPC changed so it fits their perverted "interpretation".
EPO has twice called for a diplomatic conference where they asked for this change in EPC. Both times their request was denied. A diplomatic conference is the only proper way to change EPC, as this treaty is not an EU treaty.
When that failed, they tried lobbying the EU to create law that would force all EU member states to change their patent laws to legalize software patents. This was the infamous CII directive, and was voted down by the EU parliament in the second reading.
When trying to force the EU member states to change their patent laws failed, they tried another backdoor. This was the EPLA. Basically this was meant to be a new specialized european patent court, with judges appointed by the EPO. This new court was meant to be above all other courts, including the European Court of Justice and the supreme courts of all the member countries. The idea was that the EPO could then make their "interpretation" of EPC case law. Fortunately this is off the table (for now).
But the pressure to legalize software patents is still there, and the EPO is still issuing illegal software patents. Even the EU Commission (who have been on the side of EPO since a few years before the CII directive was proposed) has had to acknowledge that EPO is outside any political or administrative control. And the EPO has nothing to fear, as they are above the law. (Really: If an EPO employee commits a murder, he cannot be prosecuted unless the EPO accepts it.)
The "problem" for the anti pirates in Sweden is that a number of court cases have established that file sharing is too small a law violation for even the police to obtain the subscriber identity behind an IP number.
And of course the swedish anti pirates would love to start running an extorsion-like business like the RIAA is doing. So now they are lobbying for a law giving them the right to get this information directly without having the police involved.
You keep repeating these links. But in this context it actually indicates who this uploader could be.
The GP post tells about a danish anti piracy guy telling that child pornography is good to use as a tool for fighting piracy.
I can tell you that this was said by the danish attorney Johan Schlüter (head of the danish anti piracy group) in a hearing held at the American Chamber of Commerce in Stockholm on May 29th. He told about the great success they had had in Denmark getting allofmp3.com blocked with the danish child pornography filter. He also advocated child pornography as the way to fight piracy, as the politicians understand child pornography better than copyright.
If you look at your Google cache link, you will find that the user achim106 started uploading in June 4th - the first monday after this hearing. You can also see that he has never uploaded anything during the weekends, only on working days.
Is this some anti piracy guy spreading child pornography as part of his work? We may never find out, as the swedish police seem very reluctant to investigate this. Anyway, none of what he uploaded was actually child pornography. It was a combination of "barely legal" porn and non-pornographic pictures of children - just what you would expect from an anti piracy guy who wants to upload child pornography without being in possession of any.
Why set up a robots file with a "don't cache" option for an internal site?
I cannot understand how this can be moderated informative. It is nothing but a claim by an AC, without any references or arguments supporting it.
And the claim is wrong: After the mainstream press in Sweden has picked up this story, the swedish police has issued a press release (in swedish), where they confirm that they intend to start blocking TPB next week if there is still child pornography to be found at the site. At least it is now official. (The police never contacted TPB, and the reason we knew about it before it happened was because a confidential mail from the police to some ISPs was leaked.)
But the police it still not telling where the child pornography can be found (if they did it would be removed immediately by TPB). Could somebody please download all the 600000+ torrents from TPB and look through the downloads before next week so we can get the child pornography removed?
The swedish blocking is working exactly the same way as in Denmark. Basically it is a secret list of sites to be blocked. Those placed on the list are usually not notified about the fact. And nobody is held responsible of wrongful additions to the list. No court is ever asked about additions to the list.
In Denmark, sites would be added to the list as an administrative act without any requirement of a court ruling, and there was no formal way for a site to protest.And even worse: It looks to me like the police is in some cases adding entries for cases where they have jurisdiction, but without starting criminal investigations.
(I believe it has now been changed so it is possible for a site to protest, but a court ruling is still not necessary.)I know of no such change. If you do, I am very interested.
The only public case of a wrongful addition to the blocking list in Denmark was a guy who had a site with links to porn. He was not notified before he was put on the list, but discovered it when he tried to look at his own site and instead found a sign saying that the site was blocked because it contained child pornography. The police claimed they had evidence when he contacted them. His domain was listed in whois with his full name, address and phone number. When the press found out the police backtracked and removed the block of the site. The police never investigated the evidence they claimed to have, and nothing more happened.
This is not "innocent until proven guilty". This is the police publicly claiming "guilty!" when they suspect that child pornography can be found on a site, or on other sites that the site links to.
No, but they can make the term longer. All international treaties on copyright that the UK is bound by (including EU directives) give minimum terms, and the UK government is free to make the terms longer.
There is a lot of pressure on the EU to make a directive to lengthen the term.
If the copyright lobby can persuade one of the EU member countries to make the term longer, they can use "law harmonization" as another excuse for a EU directive that forces all the other EU countries to also make the term longer.
In quite a lot of countries the freedom of the press is endangered due to the US copyright lobby. They want to listen to all our communications, including the so far confidential communications between press and the press informer, and they are pushing legislation for this purpose that was originally meant to be against terrorists. The EU data retension directive is a fine example of this.
And no, allofmp3 is not defending this. But they are trying hard to deliver the service their customers have already paid for, as you can see from TFA. This is more than we can say about the RIAA members.
And we all have to remember that allofmp3 has always been paying the about 15% they have to pay to the russian collection societies, and that the current problem really is because IFPI thinks this amount is too small, although it is significantly larger than what most artists get.
Such a viewpoint looks extreme, when you just state it like you do. But I think you are right that the patent system needs to be abolished.
Originally I was just against software patents. But as I started studying patents in other areas, I realized that there are major problems in all patentable areas. It took me about 7 years to get from "software patents should be abolished" to "all patents should be abolished".
There are great differences in why patents should be abolished, according to the area of patent, and this makes this issue harder to explain to most people. I won't go into the reasons here.
But one thing I think everybody here can see (at least if the know about the history of patent law) is that the patent system seems to have it's own life, and seems to expand without changes in law. Should we really allow a system that can make "new law" without the support of our democratically elected representatives?
Yes, they may have a right to claim the territory according to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea of 10 December 1982.
This is actually the start of a new landgrab (or should I say seagrab) made possible because of a change in international law. I think most nations around the north pole are investigating the geology these years to see if they can make claims. Russia is just the first nation to actually try to claim territory according to the new rules. Such claims have to be made no later than 10 years after ratifying the treaty, and Russia ratified in 1997, so they have to make the claim this year, or they will have lost the right to claim the territory.
My own country is also investigating the territory north of Greenland to see if we can claim territory. We may also claim the north pole (pdf in danish, with a map on page three showing the territories we may want to claim). We are planning to make claims before 2014 (we ratified in 2004), but the russian claims may accelerate our claims.
It is a highly subjective opinion if a democracy is the "best democracy", so if I had claimed that we would be discussing what makes a democracy good from now and until the end of time.
Instead I claim that Germany has a working democracy. A working democracy is IMHO a democracy where the voters are interested in what their elected representatives actually do; a democracy where the voters are prepared to change their vote if their elected representatives don't do what the voters think is in the best interest of them and their society; and a democracy where new parties actually have a chance to get to participate in elections and gain power if voters think they can do better than the existing parties.
In such a democracy the government has to fear the voters. The government knows that if they do not work in the best interest of the people they represent they will be outed at the next election.
A democracy like this is what I like to call a working democracy. There are lots of countries around the world that claim to have democracies because elections are held from time to time. But some of these "democracies" are not actually working, in most cases because the existing political parties have found a way to keep new political parties from getting elected.
No bullshit.
The germans actually have found a way of organizing their society so that the people do not have to fear their government, but where the government has to fear the people.
This is called democracy.
Not democracy like they claimed to have in USSR, where you could either vote for the one party, or abstain from voting.
Not democracy like they claim to have in the US of A, where you have the choice between two parties that have almost the same politics, or you can abstain from voting or throw your vote away on some party that has no chance of getting elected.
No, a real democracy where there are multible parties, where new parties actually have a chance of getting into parliament and/or government. A democracy where the people know they can change things with their vote, and where the people are prepared to vote to throw out a government that is not working in their best interest.
I think you are contradicting yourself here. Patents are (by any economic definition) monopolies in the market. So while I agree on the "avoiding monopolies" part of your statement, the "awarding patents" part is IMHO actually creating monopolies.
You have a good point when you say that 20 years likely is too long considering the pace and nature of a lot of the current innovations.
Given the speed of technological advance today, a more reasonable term of the patent monopoly would be 1-2 years.
But lowering the patent protection term to 1-2 years would make the patent system as we know it today a joke, as most patents take 2-3 years to issue from the time of the innovation.
Yes, I don't think my GF post is a troll. Probably some moderator disagreed on my views, but metamoderation should catch him.
Here's the catch to what you said though. IF I don't have some mechanism (like a patent) to protect my ideas so I can develop them they WILL be developed by individuals who can (and faster since most likely it would be done by a large corporation).But individuals and small start-ups generally have a lot shorter time to market than large corporations...
IMHO this is another argument against patents. With patents there is no incentive to get to the market first. In fact just sitting on a patent until somebody else (who may not even know about your patent) enters the market and then demanding royalties could give you more income with less investment in product development. But then, you note this is a flaw in the patent system. On the other hand, if there were no patents, everybody would have to work fast to get on the market. Entering the market asap and constantly innovating would be the best way for a company to survive in a world without patents.
Anyways, saying abolish the system I think is a bit extreme.Your are right that this is extreme. Probably it is the most extreme viewpoint on patents (perhaps except the viewpoint that anything however trivial should be patentable).
At first I was only concerned with patents on software. But then I started studying patents in other areas, how they affected the market, and how they affected the world we live in. Even after I was convinced that patents in almost all patentable areas vere bad (which took me about 8 years), I refused to argue for the complete abolishment of the patent system for a few years, as I thought it was too extreme.
So even if I spend the time needed to convince you that patents are bad in all areas (and there are a lot of differences between fx. patents on software, business methods, genes, medicine, chemistry and mechanics), you would probably still be inclined to see the complete abolishment of the patent system as too extreme. Looking back I am surprised at how long it took me to take on this opinion.
We need to give protections for innovators of new techonologies but that protection needs to be reasonable and realistic. I think we need to give innovators the best possible opportunities to get their innovations to the market. And today one of the largest obstackles for new innovative upstart companies to get to the market is patents.